Today is November 6, 2019. My interview with Brad and Jonathan on the ChooseFI Episode 152 aired 2 days ago. My desire for this interview and, really every time I tell my story, is to help others in the same situation and give people hope. I have been overwhelmed and humbled by the reaction to my story!

I want to tell everyone who listened or watched, commented and subscribed to my blog WELCOME and THANK YOU!

My goal for this website is to provide a safe place to discuss our financial difficulties or hang-ups. After all, there aren’t many people in our lives we can talk to about money, right?

I also want to give folks a place to talk about what the Bible says about money. God has called us to be good stewards of our resources. This includes, but is not limited to our money. If we steward or manage our resources well, we are in a position to help others. Being generous brings a joy to our lives like nothing else will. We don’t give just to receive back, but I can tell you the giver is always blessed!

I’m going to start my posts with financial basics for anyone who is just starting to get a handle on their money. It will be finance 101 type info. Then I will be exploring other topics like our attitude about money and generosity. I also hope to discuss interesting life hacks, like travel rewards and frugal lifestyles.

I also have a Facebook page, Started At 50. Feel free to leave a comment or start a conversation there.

One again, THANKS and feel free to leave comment or start a conversation anytime. I’m excited about all of us doing this “FI Journey” together!

Are you frustrated about your money? Are you embarrassed that you don’t know how to get a grip on your spending? Are you totally frustrated with not knowing how to invest?

You’re not alone. Most Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck. If you’d like to break that cycle, you’re in the right place. I’ve lived at least some of what you’re going through and there’s hope! If you haven’t read my story, you can read it at Our Story. We’re going to step through this together. Ready to get started?

Financial Independence

I want to start by
giving you a picture of where we’re headed.
A vision of what your life can look like when you have your money under
control. I want to tell you about
Financial Independence or FI. Fi means
different things to different people, but the technical definition is – When
your passive income from sources other than your W2 job can cover your
expenses, you are Financially Independent.

Huh, what does that mean?
What’s passive income? This is
income from a source that does not require you to do work. This means you’re not trading your time for
money like you do at your W2 job. These
sources fall into 3 categories.

Dividends
or Interest from investments like stocks or your 401k or IRA

Income from
a side job like an online store or a side business you own

Rental Real
Estate.

These are things that make you money even while you
sleep. Some folks have become
Financially Independent with investments only or rental real estate only and
some have a combination of all 3. It’s
your choice.

How Much Do I Need?

So how much money do you need to become FI? That’s up to you. The easy way to calculate this is to look at how much money it takes for you to live now. We’re going to talk through how to come up with that number in a future post. When you know how much you spend in a year, then that number is plugged into a formula. This formula is generally called the 4% Rule of Thumb. Don’t worry, it’s easy.

The 4% Rule (of Thumb)

The 4% Rule, for short, says that you can withdraw 4% of your
investments each year and still maintain your principal over time.

Total Investments x 4% = Annual
Income

Another way to calculate it would be:

Desired Annual Income x 25 = Total
Investment needed

For example, if you need $40,000/year to cover your expenses
in retirement, you will need $1,000,000 in investments.

Woah! That’s a big
chunk of change!

It might sound like a huge amount right now, but I can tell
you that with the right tools AND the right mindset, this is totally
possible.

Where Do We Begin?

The best place to begin is by evaluating where you are. Do you know how much debt you have? I mean Total Debt. You may have never added up your total
debt. It may be too scary. You may feel like you’ll be judged by your
spouse, friends or family.

It may not by pleasant, but this is where we need to
start. Pull out everything you owe and
add it up. This will include:

car loans

student loans

mortgage (if you have one)

credit cards

loans on toys like boats, 4-wheelers or jet skis

Hold on to your total debt number and we will use in the exercise in Part 2 – Your Net Worth Statement.

Assignment and Key Takeaway

Assignment 1 – Calculate your Total Debt.

Assignment 2 – Make a list of “10 Things That Make Me Happy”. Take some time to think about this. If you could plan your “perfect day”, what would it include? Who would you spend it with? What would you do? Cook a gourmet meal, go on a hike, take a road trip, eat chocolate? It can be anything. Think about what lights you up.

Key Takeaway – Don’t be afraid to take a good look at your debt. The first step in gaining control of your money is to access where you are right now.

Looking Ahead

In Part 2, we’ll look at How to calculate your Net Worth. Until then, Assignments 1 and 2 are your homework. See you next time!

First of all, thanks for stopping by and checking us out! Second, let me tell you a bit about who we are and why I’m blogging. My name is Becky and my husband is Stephen. We are originally from Texas, and when Stephen retired in 2018 we moved to the mountains of Colorado. We moved from sea level with heat and humidity to 8500 feet of cold and dry.

Becky’s Background

I grew up in a 2-working parent home. My mom was a school
teacher and my dad was a blue collar worker. We had what we needed, but
not a lot of extras. Mom was the main
provider and decision maker. Dad was impulsive and had grown up in a
family with an entitlement attitude.
Unfortunately, that got passed down. I was an adult before I realized
the attitude I had about my employer and co-workers was skewed. I grew up in a Christian home, but faith and
money were not discussed. We either had the money for something I might
want or we didn’t. There was no
education on how to handle money.

College and Early Career

Stephen and I met in college and married after graduation. We both secured good jobs earning more than our parents! We thought we were all that! Little did we know, that disaster was coming. One of the first things we did in our newly married life was buy a new car and a house. That’s what you did, right? This was the late 70’s when oil was booming and things were only going up. The advice we received was not only buy a house but get as much as you could afford. So we did. Six months into our new marriage and we were homeowners. At a 13.25% interest rate! If you lived through the 80’s, you know it got even worse.

We were making our payments fine, but not much of it was going to
principle. Someone even told us about making extra principal payments to
shorten the 30 year mortgage and save a lot of interest, but we didn’t listen.
We were too busy spending everything we made. After all, we were in a position to have fun
and have some material things for the first time in our life. This even included a sailboat and yacht club
membership. Life was good.

What wasn’t good was our lack of a relationship with the Lord or any vision for saving for the future. We knew we really needed to think about those things, but they were not a priority. “We’ll do that another day.” Our lives seemed to be on autopilot. Problem is, autopilot looks a lot like just drifting through each week, month and eventually year.

How Can We
Possibly Save Anything Now!

When our first child arrived, we decided I would
stay home with our son. This was a big
decision because my salary was a little over 50% of our income (we had never
heard of the “Save one salary and live on the other” idea).

A few years later, Stephen’s company transferred
us from Houston to Boston. Our hope was
for a large increase in salary that wouldn’t be walked back when we returned to
Texas. This was not to be. Our home in Texas was rented at a loss and
his salary didn’t keep up with the increased cost of living. The final insult happened when we returned to
Texas. Soon after moving back, his
company started downsizing and he was laid off.
So much for the salary bump!
There were several job changes after that, but never one that really
helped our financial situation.

God Enters
Stephens Life

During the mid 80’s, God did a miracle in our lives and marriage. Stephen and all 3 children came to know Christ. Stephen’s new life in the Lord caused him to look at life differently and a day came when he decided that the ethics of his coworkers did not match what he was striving for. He decided that something had to change and he started his own business and worked from home.

There were good years and some not so good. But like the old MasterCard commercial,
having Dad at home was “priceless”. He
attended every school sporting event or concert. We were blessed by him being at home and in
control of his schedule.

Now, back to the financial part of this story. Remember, we had not saved anything for the future. That means no retirement OR college savings. While Stephen owned his own business, there again was not enough income to start any saving. Or so we thought. Oh, how I wish someone had showed us the power of compounding interest!

Falling Off the Financial Cliff

In the same year, two of Stephen’s clients
decided not to pay him. I know this
happens in business, but we had not experienced it. The amount was equal to
about a year’s salary. This sent our
finances and our relationship into a death spiral. Not only did we not have any income, but
other companies that Stephen had contracted still needed to be paid.

Our financial situation deteriorated to the point
that it was affecting our marriage and family life. I was frightened and Stephen felt like a
failure. We set ourselves up for
hardship because of our failure to even have an emergency fund. All our poor choices and indifference to the
future had landed us in the middle of this storm and we were paralyzed. We had what felt like a mountain of debt, we
were buying groceries with a credit card and we were about to start the college
phase of life with 3 kids. I honestly
felt like we could pay on our debt for the rest of our lives and not pay it all
off. This is when Satan steps in and
gives you a big dose of Hopelessness.

This time in our family was basically awful. No hope and, as the old saying goes, the
light at the end of the tunnel felt like an oncoming train. But, God’s grace is new every morning! He didn’t leave us in our mess even though we
really deserved it.

Enter God’s Comfort and Hope

With the recommendation of a friend,
Stephen was connected with a small business owner that had a position to
fill. He was hired and we were finally
in a place of stability with a steady paycheck.
He worked in this position for 2 years and, in that time, paid off his
old business debt. We had room to
breathe! After those 2 years, Stephen
took another position at a firm he had admired for many years. We felt like God had held this position just
for him. It was perfect and he fit right
in. The salary was good and the bonuses
were even better.

Stephen started this position is 2008. Our oldest son was in college on a full ride scholarship. Our second son would be starting college soon and had a ¾ scholarship. We were in a much better position than before, but still didn’t know how to handle our finances well. We just knew we didn’t EVER want to go back to where we’d been.

Ramsey Days

A friend mentioned some tapes they had
from someone named Dave Ramsey. (Yes, I
said tapes, as in cassette tapes!) I
listened to a few and after discussing what I heard with Stephen, we decided
“What can it hurt?” It didn’t take long
before we realized we needed a change in our thinking and our attitude.

We saw how Big changes could be made if
you worked at it and we wanted more. We
were hooked on Ramsey’s simple, bible-based approach to finances. After all, God has given us all we have and
we had not been good stewards. Now we
were ready to change that for good. A
desire for helping others out of their mess and hopelessness became a passion
of ours. Stephen and I became Dave Ramsey leaders. It was very rewarding to see others make
positive changes that can last a lifetime.

The Big Shovel

The next few years consisted of paying
for college and saving everything we could, which still wasn’t much, but we had
a different attitude about our spending.
When the youngest was done with college, we were able to really make a
difference with our savings. Stephen’s
salary and bonuses gave us a HUGE shovel to use for retirement savings. It felt so good! And, we had 3 adult children with 4 degrees
between them and Not One of them had
any college debt. Funny thing about
making better decisions. God can bless
them. It was like He was waiting for us
to grow up, act like adults and then He truly poured blessings on us.

Finding Choose FI

After we got to a place of stability, we thought our lives could somewhat go back on autopilot. Not only that, but we could loosen the purse strings a bit and enjoy some of the income we had. At that point, we assumed retirement would come at “normal” retirement age of 66 or 67. In May of 2017, our oldest son introduced us to the ChooseFI podcast. (We had not entered the podcast world yet!) We listened to a few selected episodes and were quickly hooked. The information covered in ChooseFI, along with other podcasts and blogs, took what we knew and put it into warp drive! We learned about travel rewards, tax optimization, being even more frugal and many other topics. After re-evaluating our position and checking out some of the speadsheets found on blogs like Big ERN and Retirement Manifesto, we decided to keep our spending low. That allowed us to shave off 3 years and retire at 63. Not early, but early for us!

Life Lessons

Our whole family had survived the bad
years and come out the other side in good shape. A little charred from the experience, but in
good shape. In fact, I thought many
times that I never want to go back to where we were, but we learned lessons we
wouldn’t have otherwise. I don’t think
we would be in the great place we are now if we hadn’t walked through that
pain. We probably would have continued
to drift through life thinking normal is good enough. Unfortunately, normal is in debt and living
paycheck to paycheck. Also, many people
assume that normal can’t be changed, but it can totally be changed with a shift
in your thinking. We have had our eyes
opened. Opened to better attitudes and
more efficient ways of handling money and life.

I will go more in depth with those changes in future posts. Right now, I want you to know one thing. If you’re young and don’t know where to start, there is a way to get your money under control and make BIG changes for your future self! If you’re not quite so young, it’s not too late. Let me say that one again. IT’S NOT TOO LATE! BUT, you need to start NOW. In either case, forgive yourself and let’s begin to make positive changes for your future.

Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever.

First of all, thanks for stopping by and checking us out! Second, let me tell you a bit about who we are and why I’m starting this blog. My name is Becky and my husband is Stephen. We are originally from Texas, and when Stephen retired in 2018 we moved to the mountains of Colorado. We moved from sea level with heat, humidity and mosquitos to 8500 feet. It’s cold, dry and beautiful!

Now, the reason for the blog. Stephen and I spent a big chunk of our adult life making poor choices. Choices about relationships, parenting and money. The short version of the story (read the whole story here) is that we started living out our faith and our relationship with Jesus Christ in our 40’s, and as a result, started making better choices in our marriage and parenting.

Believe me, it was baby steps at first, but we gradually made
progress. Then at about 50 years old, we
started making better choices with our money.
It was at that point that God really blessed our family. Not only financially, but in other areas,
too. It was like He was waiting for us
to grow up and be ready for His blessings.

We are not trained or skilled at financial matters other than
our own experiences and being students of “The School of Hard Knocks.”
LOL. What we do have is a passion for
helping others who are struggling because of a lack of knowledge (You don’t
know what you don’t know!), or those who, like us, didn’t start as early as
they should have and now feel lost and/or hopeless. Our hope with this blog is to share the
basics of good, sound financial information in the framework of our faith and
dependence on our Heavenly Father. We
are by no means the only place to find financial info, but we hope to create a
place of peace and hope in a culture bent on keeping up with the Joneses and
instant gratification. We want to offer
hope to young adults that don’t know how to start with their finances and to a
more mature generation that is afraid “It’s too late!”

As a little dash of spice, we will throw in some of our experiences in learning how to be retired and learning how to live in the mountains. It’s beautiful, but does anyone have any oxygen?!

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8